Developing secure and scalable healthcare data management systems

Introduction

As the healthcare industry enters the 21st century, secure and scalable data management systems play vital roles in running efficient medical operations for the welfare of patients and the safety and financial prosperity of hospitals. Medical facilities are responsible for managing massive amounts of data. Day in and day out, the system receives and records patient demographics, clinical information, treatment history, billing information, laboratory results, medication history, and several other types of information.

These clinical data must be protected from loss during storage and transfer, and breaches must be prevented. Otherwise, the hospital risks severe penalties and fines under relevant laws such as the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This applies to both government and private medical establishments. While the gravity of data loss urgently impacts the healthcare industry, effectively protecting this valuable data requires significant work and advanced expertise.

Further, as healthcare organizations grow in size and the scale of data increases, scalability can become important – a traditional data-management system supporting a growing amount of data can become inefficient or even inoperable and change. By developing scalable systems, one can ensure that security can grow with the system load without jeopardizing performance or security. A robust approach to security and scalability can help ensure that healthcare data management can support modern healthcare environments properly.

Why secure data management is critical in healthcare

In healthcare specifically, data security is paramount. Personal information, such as medical histories, diagnoses, and planned treatments, is central to providing quality care and, alongside that, an individual and private matter that a patient might not want shared. It therefore seems evident that theft of this data signals a breach of trust, as it would be misused or, at worst, sold on to the highest bidder. Building data security in healthcare complies with HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) rules in the US and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) rules in the EU. Patients must consent to sharing information, and they have complete autonomy over who can access what type of information. As seen in celebrity personal data cases, hacking into trustworthy institutions to access private information results in a data breach and shredding of boundaries, an invasion of privacy, shame, and embarrassment.

Data breaches in healthcare are extremely risky, and the consequences can reach further than just financial losses. Data breaches result in direct costs from fines, legal fees, and remediation costs. However, there are collateral costs, such as damage to reputation and patient trust. In 2023, the average cost of a healthcare data breach jumped to $10.9 million, compared with averages of $6.45 million and $8 million in previous years, according to the Ponemon Institute’s 2023 Cost of a Data Breach Report. The most significant financial cost of a data breach occurred at Anthem Inc., an American health insurer, when hackers in 2015 exposed the personal information of around 78.8 million people. The company saw a significant reduction in subscribers and was charged $16 million by Oregon state, resulting in a financial loss of up to $115 million.

The breach of data can also impact patient care. For example, care is fragmented if providers cannot access valid, recent data. Delays in treatment, misdiagnosis, poor follow-through, and other patient-outcome concerns can result. Remediation of a breach involves significant costs, including upgrading systems and procedures to address regulatory mandates, ultimately impeding care. So, data security is not only required by regulations – it is the foundation for safe and effective care.

The need for scalable solutions in healthcare data management

Scalability in the healthcare software context means the system can manage and process a growing quantity of data and several users while maintaining responsiveness and functionality. As healthcare organizations expand in size and coverage, the quantity of generated data accumulates exponentially. Scalable solutions can cope with this upsurge so that the software can be scaled up when the demand gets higher without compromising efficiency and efficacy regarding responsiveness and functionality.

Data growth can create scalability issues for health organizations, mainly as healthcare systems grow in size, and data capture becomes more encompassing. While small systems may suffice for initial trials in patient care, increasing patient populations and adding new data sources can cause these systems to reach capacity. This is why project scalability is essential – it necessitates that systems expand data management capabilities in an increasingly complex environment, but only in steps. This allows an architecture to adapt to increases in volume and user requirements based on demand without requiring reconstruction or shut-down during the process.

These scalable systems’ efficiency is made possible by using the latest technologies and architectures designed to work efficiently with large amounts of data. Decreased data search and processing times make services with higher requirements much more accessible to provide. Cloud-based systems offer software with flexibility and elasticity, enabling companies to scale up or down the size of data storage and processing systems at their convenience. Additionally, these systems can cancel out bottlenecks by distributing and using the power of all available computing units to work on various parts of the data and then combine the results. Therefore, by investing in scalable solutions, we can provide healthcare companies with data management systems that will allow them to maintain efficiency while supporting continuous growth. Their systems will remain robust, reliable, and capable of keeping up with the ever-increasing number of available data points.

Best Practices for Developing Secure and Scalable Healthcare Data Management Systems

Implementing robust security protocols

Robust security protocols should consistently be implemented when developing secure custom healthcare software solutions. One of the most important and basic security measures that organizations should consider when dealing with sensitive patient information is encryption. Encryption is a system that encodes data into a coded format that cannot be read without the correct decryption key. Encryption renders intercepted data unintelligible, even when the data is in transit or stored on databases. Multi-factor authentication, or MFA, is an additional layer of security that protects any given system from attack. MFA requires a user to provide at least two different verification forms before granting access to a system (such as a password and a biometric scan). A combination of MFA protocols significantly increases a system’s complexity, making it much more difficult for an unauthorized individual to breach.

Ensuring compliance with healthcare regulations

Healthcare industry regulations are an essential part of health data governance. These regulations ensure that the underlying data management systems are compliant and conducted according to industry standards on patient privacy. Many laws are tied to the auditing, storing, and protecting healthcare data, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the United States and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe. HIPAA requires core safeguards to be in place to ensure access to patient data is not breached, and it also lays the foundation for the confidentiality and integrity of personal data. Similarly, GDPR presents strict due diligence on how organizations collect, store, and protect their data. It requires them to commit to the safeguarding principles of data protection, which includes allowing patients to have control over their data. Complying with these rules is crucial for retaining patient confidence and the official law of the land, which may carry heavy fines and redressable legal actions. Firms must maintain compliance through regular audits and updates of the security practices to address the changing threat landscape and surging regulatory compliance issues.

Designing for scalability

Systems should be designed to be scalable to support the ever-increasing healthcare data management demands. A modular architecture for a system provides the flexibility to upgrade systems in an incremental and non-disruptive fashion to support new features or additional data loads. This allows for increased modularity, making the system relatively easy to modify and enhance. Cloud solutions provide a scalable infrastructure in that the storage and processing resources can be allocated on-demand and changed dynamically as the organization’s needs determine. Another way to support scalability in cloud solutions is the distributed nature of these platforms, which allow data to be processed and stored at multiple locations or with various cloud vendors. An approach particularly critical for a highly available disaster recovery system is data redundancy, which is the process of having multiple copies of data stored in various systems or locations. This provides higher data availability while also enhancing system reliability. These design principles provide healthcare organizations with a means by which a system can grow organically to support changing needs while maintaining performance and reliability.

The role of custom software in healthcare data management

Healthcare custom software development is indispensable among healthcare data management systems because data generated in hospitals, clinics, or doctor’s offices during a patient’s journey from arrival to discharge requires custom solutions that address the various requirements and challenges specific to the healthcare field. Unlike off-the-shelf software, which tends to be a one-size-fits-all solution designed to address data management issues of a broad segment of industries, custom healthcare software is generated based on a healthcare organization’s specific nature, workflows, regulatory requirements, and data management issues.

Its ability to be customized to particular needs for security and scalability is one of its main advantages. Healthcare institutions handle sensitive patient data that need to be protected at an increasingly high level. Custom software can be built with advanced security, such as encryption, multi-factor authentication, or compliance (i.e., ensuring that a system adheres to HIPAA GDPR in the EU), guarding against unauthorized access or hacking. Custom solutions can also be built to scale with data volume and demand growth, including modular architecture and cloud-based infrastructure, making adding more layers and resources easier as business demands evolve. These customizations ensure that the built software grows with the organization’s needs, offering long-term solutions that can change and adapt as new technology emerges.

Asahi Technologies specializes in IT and software development and builds bespoke software for the healthcare sector. It works directly with healthcare providers to create systems that meet their specific design goals, ensuring the solution is secure, scalable, and fits into existing systems and workflows. The company’s commitment to tailored solutions helps keep healthcare organizations updated with data management regulations, improve efficiency, and optimize workflows.

Conclusion

To summarize, developing secure and scalable systems is essential to keep patient information safe, keep data flowing efficiently, and help generate more healthcare data. Robust security protocols, such as encryption and multi-factor authentication, can protect data from breaches. In contrast, rules and regulations, such as HIPAA and GDPR, can ensure that no patient data becomes available to those outside their exclusive community. On the other hand, scalable solutions, such as modular architecture and cloud-based systems, will allow processors to adapt to increasing duties without slowing down and lagging. Healthcare professionals can have their cake and eat it by investing in customized software to help them simultaneously achieve security and scalability in their operations. To effectively run a healthcare system within the broader context of society and avoid technical friction that can lead to downed processes and irate people awaiting care, healthcare professionals should consider Asahi Technologies’ help.

People Also Ask (PAA) Questions

What are the best practices for healthcare data management?

To enable such best practices, robust security provisions, data encryption, multi-factor authentication, and compliance with regulations such as HIPAA and GDPR are important. Well-designed systems that can scale up with growing data volumes are also important.

How do you ensure data security in healthcare?

Data security is provided with multi-factor authentication of access, security practices updates, and frequent auditing to reveal risks.

What is the importance of scalability in healthcare software?

At scale, healthcare IT software will be able to handle larger and larger datasets with growing numbers of users without any noticeable performance degradation as the system grows with the organisation.

How can healthcare organizations protect patient data?

With these architecture practices, organisations can be assured their patient data privacy has robust encryption, secure access controls, regulatory compliance adherence, and regularly scheduled security audits to identify risks and form a plan for potential disasters.

Why is custom software development important in healthcare?

Custom software development is important because it provides tailored solutions that meet specific organizational needs, ensures compliance with industry regulations, and offers enhanced security and scalability compared to off-the-shelf solutions.

What are the key considerations for HIPAA compliance in software development?

Key considerations include implementing stringent data protection measures, ensuring proper encryption and access controls, conducting regular security assessments, and maintaining audit trails to track data access and modifications.